WALK: NORTH BOVEY TO MANATON

1) Departing from Moorland View’s garden entrance (with the white door), turn left and walk diagonally across the village green towards the Ring of Bells pub. With the pub on your left and the phone box on your right, walk down the tarmac path, past some pretty cottages. Go through or past the gate until the area opens up to reveal some stepping stones over the River Bovey. There is also a wooden footbridge for the less adventurous.

2) Having crossed the river, continue along a stony, (and sometimes muddy), lane between trees. After a few hundred metres you will emerge through a gate on to a tarmac road where you turn left.

3) After almost a mile, a tiny road joins the one you are on from the left and at a sloping junction, but keep right and going up the road you are on until, about a hundred metres beyond the little junction you will find a field gate on the left with a wooden sign showing a path across this field.

4) Having closed the gate behind you, head diagonally across this field, contouring the slope and aiming for the far and lower corner. Here, after crossing a small wall, a stream and a stile, you will be in a mixed woodland. Follow the path, which can be quite wet in places as it winds towards the top of the wood and a wooden gate. Go through and continue this line, parallel to a boundary on your left and to a stile in a fence ahead. Cross here. Within about 50 metres, the wooded path now splits and you need to take the path to the right.

5) This path steadily climbs up through the scrub and in Summer the bracken here is high. At the top and underneath the granite outcrop of Manaton Rocks, there is another stile into an enclosed path with a fence on one side and rocks on the other. There is a place where these rocks can be scaled to the top if you want a cracking view of the Bovey valley.

Head downhill now, over stiles and between bushes, across the edge of fields and, on approaching the church, turn hard left through a gate into the churchyard of St. Winifred’s church noting the ancient and headless cross just through the gate, and around which, many moons ago, a curate here used to encourage his flock to process, with curious chanting, at certain times of year! This church is usually open daily and is well worth a look. It has a fine old screen on which the faces of the saints have been gouged out during the Reformation in the 1500s.

6) Leave by way of the main gate at the far side and cross the green, noting the beautiful thatched house on the left at the top, once the Half Moon Inn. When you reach the other side of the green, turn left along the road for a short distance. The Manaton Parish Hall appears on the left and just past this, on the right, is the start of a lane with a gate at right angles. Go through here.

7) You are now in Slinkers’ Lane, frequented several hundred years ago, by highwaymen and cut-throats. There shouldn’t be a problem now but just keep hold of your wallet ... This delightful narrow lane leads down through trees and bushes, through a gate 14 and, at the bottom of a slight slope, you need to turn right towards Manaton and Water. Keep on this lane following the wooden bridlepath signs to Manaton, until a right turn leads you over tarmac, and another right turn at the junction takes you to a cross roads in Manaton village with the Kestor Inn on the right.

8) Go straight across the cross roads into a quiet lane which, bordered by odd farms and houses, winds through farmland to another cross roads, Hayne Cross, where you need to go straight across towards Hayne Down. This road reaches a house and then peters out into a path which rises through trees until reaching a gate on to the moor. From here your way is to the right and up, up over the saddle of a ridge known as Hayne Down.

9) Pause here for some good views to the west. On descending the other side, look right and you will see a huge granite pillar resembling a man wearing a cap. This is Bowerman’s Nose and has a legend to it: Bowerman the hunter was turned to stone after having disturbed three witches in the valley as he and his horse, thundered up through. You can make a detour to study him more closely if you wish and if you dare, put your hands flat on his granite body. Some say you can feel a heartbeat ..... Having returned to the path, head downhill and on reaching the tarmac lane, turn right going downhill.

10) Along this road and in this area of scrubby trees, you can often hear a cuckoo calling in April or May. On reaching the gate at the bottom, go through and continue until reaching a bigger road at a T junction where you turn left.

11) Walk along this road until after a hundred metres or so, you find a stile on the left in the hedge. Climb over here and follow the footpath across stiles through two fields, which nicely cuts off a corner in the bend in the road. Emerging on to the road, turn left again for several hundred metres until a tarmac lane on the right leads away from this road and up hill. A sign points up here to Barracott.

12) Continue past a couple of houses and a farm as the road turns into a cart track and eventually to a gate on to the moor. Once through this gate, turn hard right and, keeping next to the wall which rises up the slope, follow it to a right-angled corner. Go right with the wall and continue following it until the wall takes another right turn. There are some lovely beech trees on this corner.

13) From here you can see a conifer plantation ahead. You need to aim for the left side of it. The path ahead bears left anyway. Where it splits into two, keep to the left path and very soon you will see the left end of this bit of the forest with its enclosing dry-stone wall. Head for this corner.

14) The wall makes a right turn downhill and you need to follow it for 20 or 30 15 metres before the path you are on, bears to the left and needs to take you with it. After a few hundred metres it is joined by another path coming downhill from the left at a short, green-topped post and now drops down more steeply through an area of young oak trees. You will notice that you are going down towards another part of the forest and, as the hill becomes more gradual, a forest wall boundary will appear on your left. You need to stay on the line of your path and parallel to this descending wall. Wind down along a wet and sometimes muddy, path as the scrub vegetation gets thicker around you. At the bottom is a small gate.

15) Go through here , follow the path and cross over a forest ride into a bridlepath - wooden signs direct you. After about a hundred metres, bear off to the left into trees and down to another gate. Go through, along a track, until through another gate, you will emerge on to the tarmac road.

16) Your way is now left and downhill and you need to retrace your steps from your outward journey. At the bottom of this road, go over the bridge, (Fairbrook Bridge; 18th Century), and back up into North Bovey. The Ring of Bells is on the right. Time for a cup of tea or perhaps something stronger ...